A Better Water System Comes to the Southwest

April 1314:092017

PHOENIX, AZ – 13 Apr, 2017 – As anyone in Arizona knows, there is no more valuable a commodity than water. Endless effort, time, and money have gone into trying to solve the problem of how to use the limited water available in a thriving yet thirsty land.

Cooling tower water, why should we care? Yes the key to the air-conditioning we all depend on. Did you know that the smallest cooling tower is designed to pour hundreds of thousands of gallons of water down the drain every year? The average high school, hospital, hotel or commercial office building each pour millions of gallons of water down the drain each year and all this water contains the biocides and chlorides that companies add to control scale and bacteria. There is a better water treatment system for cooling towers that does not use chemicals.

The HydroPlex is the “Better Water System” for commercial cooling towers. North American Recycling Technologies QMS manufactures the HydroPlex here in the US and they’ve been doing it – both building and installing their systems – nationally and globally for over 20 years.

Now, for the first time in the company’s history, they’re proving the effectiveness of the HydroPlex against Arizona’s excessive hard water, having installed their first unit in Phoenix five months ago.

John Dorrough, Head of Desert Southwest Sales & Marketing together with company engineers teamed with the chief engineer of the Plaza Companies, Ed Slye, to install and track the performance of the HydroPlex unit at the Legacy Place building downtown. The NGO that owns the building were very keen to incorporate this green technology into their HVAC system.

Slye states “I just want you to know that I am very impressed with the HydroPlex system installed at Legacy Place.

“It has only been a few months but I have never had a cooling tower that is as clean and stays as clean since the system is designed to continuously clean the tower.”

Dorrough, who inspires by speaking like a man who is one part salesman and one part scientist, elaborates: “The cost savings incurred by replacing chemical systems with the

HydroPlex result in a return on investment of three years or less. The added benefit of being able to use all of the bleed water for irrigation means that the average high school with 1,000 tons of cooling capacity could sprinkle four million gallons of clean water a year on its sports fields instead of pouring it down the sanitary drain mixed with toxic chemicals. The additional savings of a drastically reduced water bill will have a very positive effect on the school’s operating budget.

“Among the benefits that the HydroPlex brings is that it increases the cycles of concentration (thereby using less water), controls scale (thereby saving electricity), and eliminates bacteria including Legionella (removing a serious health hazard), all without injecting chemicals. A clean tower with no chemicals will not suffer from accelerated corrosion; this extends the working life of the tower and postpones replacement costs.”

Dorrough posed the question to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (equivalent of the EPA for the state) of using bleed water lacking chemicals from cooling towers for irrigation. The response from ADEQ was that this use is approved and exempt from any permit (by statute). This is fantastic news for any property owner/manager operating a cooling tower that also has extensive landscaping.

In 1997, the U.S. Department of Energy recommended the HydroPlex system components as a replacement for chemical systems to reduce energy requirement, conserve water, eliminate descaling, and reduce heat exchanger tube replacement.

The potential water savings for Arizona from using non-chemical water treatment systems on cooling towers could reach billions of gallons annually. The future of cooling tower water treatment does not include chemicals and the future is here.

NART QMS engineers are available to answer technical inquiries and the factory is in continuous production of scalable units sized to accommodate towers of any capacity.

To order HydroPlex and see one installed in Phoenix call John Dorrough at (480) 251-9031. To schedule a site survey of your cooling towers email [email protected]